![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettIncludes current politics + mental illness, HURRAH.
OKAY THAT WILL DO FOR NOW.
- Dear everybody goyisch, and especially everyone white and goyisch, who is reblogging Dear White People THIS IS US shit in re Charlottesville, without reblogging things about Jews' conditional access to Whiteness, given what was being chanted there, I see you. I am pretty sure you're just not thinking! Please think about it.
- I am really struggling with the posts currently doing the rounds about how ~~engaging in gratitude exercises is bullshit~~ (specifically prompted by Gratitude Lists Are B.S. — It Was an "Ingratitude" List That Saved Me). I have been Not Engaging but it seems to me that this criticism of engaging in gratitude practices is... fundamentally based on a massive misunderstanding, i.e., it's also incredibly valuable and necessary to get validation that the shit you're dealing with is hard. "and here are three things I can be pleased about" isn't about denying that bad shit is going on! It's about defiance and stubbornness and spite and taking joy anyway. Which is another place this article goes wrong:
I started making gratitude lists every day — following the directions carefully and making sure to be specific about the reasons I was grateful: I had a loving husband who laughed at the same obscure Saturday Night Live sketches as me. I had a dirt cheap apartment in the hippest neighborhood in Los Angeles. I had a commercial acting agent and got to go on big Hollywood auditions for high paying gigs.
... that's... not actually specific. It's generalities. It's not "I saw a ridiculously bright green caterpillar on my way home, I didn't even realise nature came in that colour". It isn't "this specific thing that happened specifically today". It's trying to convince yourself that your life is ~in general~ great, which is unequivocally not what those exercises are for! And I recognise that the problem here is the exercises being explained poorly, but also AUGH, the feelings of alienation and invalidation and isolation that are coming from reading this shit when I don't think it would be kind or helpful to go "actually have u considered". - on which topic: observe me here making a list of the things that are stressing me out. observe that that is literally some of my counselling homework at the moment. write a list of the things that are shit rather than sweeping them under the carpet and then wondering why you're miserable! and also take joy in... surprise free ice cream while a group of musicians plays light jazz on top of the book barge on the canal!
- Minor and petty (but nonetheless contributing to a sense of alienation): a post that is doing the rounds of tumblr that features an illustration of someone with incredibly expensive leg prosthetics using an incredibly cheap and nasty wheelchair.
- OH RIGHT AND, I say, coming back to edit this in because MORE PETTY SHIT I'M ANNOYED ABOUT: the pronunciation-of-scone "debate" is not a real argument! it serves the same social function as talking about the weather! few if any people ACTUALLY CARE. it's oKAY. IT'S JUST SMALLTALK.
OKAY THAT WILL DO FOR NOW.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-08-17 05:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-08-27 03:04 pm (UTC)